STATEN ISLAND, N.Y. — When I was sitting around a table with a group of teenagers recently, they were talking about how their parents handled their anger when they were young.

“My mom whupped me,” Joe, a 17-year-old boy, said. “She was trying to teach me not to get mad.”

Alissa, a 15-year-old girl with pink hair and rings in her lips and eyebrows, said she got beat when she got mad as a young child.

“When I was about 5,” Alissa told the group, “I’d get angry when my stepdad was beating on my mom. When I’d get mad and start yelling at him to stop, he’d turn on me and hit me with his fists and a belt.”

VIOLENT HISTORY

Larry, a 14-year-old with a history of assault at school, said whenever he got mad as a kid, his mother would spank him. “That’s how I learned not to get angry,” Larry said.

“You really learned that lesson well,” Alissa said sarcastically. “Didn’t you just tell us you got suspended for pushing a teacher?”

“Hey, that wasn’t my fault,” Larry said in defense. “That teacher has been pushing my buttons since I went into her class.”

Larry, Alissa, and Joe are part of an anger-management class I’m teaching with teens on probation to a juvenile court.

Each of the six adolescents in the group was placed on probation because at some point in the past they let their anger get out of control.

Some of these teens came to the class protesting that they didn’t have an anger problem. But in one or more sessions, each of them talked about the physical punishment they received at home and the aggression they witnessed within their family.

Vince, a 16-year-old in the group, got into trouble for wielding a knife during a fight.

“My dad always beat on me and my mother,” Vince said. “He doesn’t do that any more, though,” Vince said, perhaps anticipating questions from me or his peers in the class, “cause he’s in prison now.”

But Vince admits he still sometimes carries a knife, belligerently adding, “And I’m not afraid to use it.”

KNOW THEY’RE AT FAULT

All of these teens acknowledge they act inappropriately when they’re angry.

Earlier in this session, Alissa told us that a few days prior to the session when a teacher told her to do something she didn’t want to do, she grabbed a computer monitor and was about to throw it at the teacher.

“I had my hands on it and was lifting it up before I even knew it,” Alissa said. “But I was able to stop myself — this time.”

Joe was in a fight at school a week before this session and the other kid ended up in the hospital. “This boy was talking smack at school,” Joe said. “I didn’t have any choice because I was real mad.”

For these teens, it is difficult for them to make the connection between the spankings, the aggression they experienced directly and the violence they saw frequently in their families. To most of them, aggression, violence, and even abuse were a normal part of everyday life.

Maybe before their three-month class is over, they will have learned the connection. And more importantly, it is hoped they will have acquired better anger-management skills.

DETRIMENTAL EFFECT

For parents reading this column, it is important to realize there is a definite connection between children being exposed to various forms of aggression and violence and the potential behavior of those children when they are teenagers.

This is a connection I wish more of the high-conflict, post-divorce couples I work with could make. But it’s a powerful lesson to learn for parents who are in conflict, either in an intact marriage or following a divorce.

The lesson is simple enough: Children exposed to prolonged conflict, anger, hostility, and aggression will suffer as they get older.

That suffering may not mean they will turn out as violent and aggressive as some of the teens in my anger-management groups, but there will be — and I can say this without any hesitation — negative outcomes for children growing up with conflict, aggression, and co-parent fighting. Sometimes such outcomes are not behavioral, but they could be emotional or even physical.

The bottom line is that you can’t carry on a hostile, conflictual relationship with your co-parent and expect your children will be immune from long-term consequences.

James Windell’s column, Coping With Kids, appears on Tuesdays in the Relationships section with the Staten Island Advance.